The Energy Issue - School of International and Public Affairs ...

INSIDE
SIPA
A Legacy to Be Proud Of By Rob Garris
In 1996, there were 21 full-time faculty members at the School of
International and Public Affairs. Twenty-five years had passed
since the last classroom renovations. Students chained their bicycles
to stairway banisters in the lobby. There was no admissions office;
the Office of Career Services occupied two small rooms on the 14th
floor. Two degree programs, the Master of International Affairs and the
Master of Public Administration, operated almost completely independently
of one another, with no faculty or student interaction.
The following year Lisa Anderson was appointed
dean, and with fearless determination and an
always-present sense of humor, she transformed
the School. SIPA now offers six degree programs in
a much-improved, though very crowded, building.
A large and distinguished department with more
than 60 faculty members is actively involved in
governance, research, and teaching at the School,
and a very busy admissions office handles thousands
of applications each year for coveted spots
in each incoming class.
Lisa Anderson came to the deanship at SIPA
with considerable experience at Columbia and
extensive connections in the academic and policy
worlds outside Morningside Heights. She earned
her PhD in political science at Columbia in 1981,
writing a dissertation on state formation in North
Africa. She ventured north after graduation, teaching
at Harvard for five years before returning to
Columbia in 1986 as an associate professor. She
sharpened her skills as a leader at Columbia by
serving as the director of the Middle East Institute
and as chair of the political science department,
but neither of those roles presented challenges or
rewards comparable to leading SIPA. Anderson
says, “I learned more in my ten years at SIPA than
Dean Anderson with Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, and Professor Richard Betts, director of the
Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Dean Anderson with former New York City mayor
David N. Dinkins
in my entire time as a graduate student. It’s like
going to school every day.”
Her fans would say that she learned well,
strengthening the School in ways that have prepared
it for the challenges of the 21st century.
Among her many accomplishments was the creation
of the Global Public Policy Network (GPPN),
which connects some of the most prestigious graduate
public policy schools around the world. “In a
decade or so, the creation of the GPPN will be
viewed as a transformative event in SIPA’s coming
of age on the world scene—and it will be properly
credited to Lisa’s deft blending of visionary leadership
with determined diplomacy,” says Kenneth
Prewitt, chair of the Department of International
and Public Affairs at Columbia.
That transformation is already under way.
Professor Rodolfo de la Garza, who was an
exchange professor this spring at SIPA’s partner
school in Paris, Sciences Po, had to adapt his
teaching on immigration policy for a European
student body. Anna della Valle, who teaches one
of SIPA’s core economics courses, is reworking
her assignments in preparation for this summer,
when she will teach the economics unit in a midcareer
training program for Chinese government
officials, offered jointly in Beijing by GPPN partners—the
London School of Economics and
Political Science, Sciences Po, and SIPA. “As
faculty teach and conduct research at our partner
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